Microsoft wants you to know it isn't handing over your emails and chats to the government willy-nilly, but can’t tell you what is being handed over to the government because the government won’t allow that.

Essentially, Microsoft and the other big tech companies say they are between a brick wall and boulder — they aren’t allowed to say what data they have given the government as the result of warrants and court orders.

“We do not provide any government with direct access to emails or instant messages. Full stop,” wrote Brad Smith, Microsoft’s general counsel and executive vice president of legal and corporate affairs.

Smith wrote a blog post Tuesday echoing sentiments similar to those already voiced by other big tech companies such as Google and Facebook, that the companies believe the U.S. Constitution “guarantees our freedom to share more information with the public.” But, Smith wrote, the government is preventing them from doing that.

“Government lawyers have yet to respond to the petition we filed in court on June 19 seeking permission to publish the volume of national security requests we have received,” Smith wrote.

He called on the Attorney General to “uphold the Constitution” and force the government lawyers to allow Microsoft to share more about what information the government can access and how that access is provided.

Smith denied that Microsoft makes its Dropbox-like file storage platform, SkyDrive, available for government agencies to peruse customer data at will, and said the company does not provide the government with direct access to the system at all. Instead, Smith wrote, Microsoft provides the specific data the government requests when it goes through the proper legal channels such as obtaining a warrant or court order.

Smith did not deny, however, that the company's Skype video-phone technology can be tapped in the same way other phone services have been in the past. The government does not have unfettered access to Skype customers’ data, he wrote, but Microsoft assumes “all calls, whether over the internet or by fixed line or mobile phone will offer similar levels of privacy and security.”